The term “tone information” is used to refer to information about sounds that are used to indicate the status of an apparatus such as a telephone, facsimile machine or data communications apparatus.
Telephone tones such as dialling tones and busy or engaged tones differ in different countries and in traditional telephone networks it has been possible to deal with this because national telephone networks have been used. However, with the advent of next generation communications networks in which telephone services are transmitted over a packet network, a need has arisen to manage telephone tones in a more sophisticated manner. Similar tone information is also used by facsimile machines and data communication systems and here the same problems arise.
Traditional telephone networks, have typically been deployed within national boundaries and using a relatively small number of large switches. Each switch is provided with information about telephone tones that should be applied in particular circumstances. This is usually achieved by separately configuring each switch with the relevant tone information. Next generation networks, on the other hand, often span more than one national boundary and thus the problem of providing the correct country specific tone information to particular nodes in the network arises. A particular node in a next generation network may serve terminals in different countries for example. In addition, the number of nodes in next generation networks which require tone information is typically much greater than the number of switches requiring such information in traditional telephone networks. Also, in next generation networks nodes which require tone information are frequently added during expansion of the network and need to be provided with the correct tone information quickly and efficiently. As well as this, upgrades or changes to telephone tones need to be accommodated whereas in traditional telephone networks changes to telephone tones were rarely required.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method of providing tone information to nodes in a packet network over which telephone services are transmitted which overcomes or at least mitigates one or more of the problems noted above.
Further benefits and advantages of the invention will become apparent from a consideration of the following detailed description given with reference to the accompanying drawings, which specify and show preferred embodiments of the invention.